keybuk

For what it's worth, I pre-ordered the day of the catalog announcement

Yeah this is what I suspected... Which of course means that a pre-order is no longer a guarantee of actually getting the thing you ordered, which in of itself is somewhat concerning.

I've had a similar e-mail about two other items: R4991 - Network Rail, ex-BR Mk2F TSO Structure Gauging Train Support Coach, 72630 R4997 - Network Rail, Ex-BR Super GUV, ADB 971003 QQA Hornby list one of those as In Stock on their own website, the other is listed as In Stock in at least Gaugemaster's store. Strange things may be afoot, are Hattons claiming cancellation when they're just not receiving as big an allocation as they expected? Are they having a spat with Hornby too now?

There are other shops. For me a huge red flag is Hatton's absolute silence on the issue to their customers who have open pre-orders for items that other shops are now listing as In Stock. 'twas only a few weeks ago that I defended Hatton's in another thread, on the basis of their great service - and I'm now seriously considered cancelling all (about 8,500 quid worth, eep!) of my pre-orders with them, regardless of manufacturer, and moving them elsewhere. It's just as easy to switch shop as it is to stop buying one manufacturer's model when a better version comes out.

Great, I'll buy five! When are you going to start shipping them?

I can't answer for the original poster, but I can answer why Hattons gets my business - they've earned it. They reply to e-mails. I've never had to chase an order from them for over a year. I've never missed a pre-order because they "forgot about it, sorry, we're out of stock now, would you like a Class 37 instead?" I've never had them send me the wrong model, and then been "well, it's yours now, we can't take it back, if you want to buy the one you really wanted, we can charge your card again" And in the cases have gone wrong, including things like missing decoders in DCC Fitted models, the bag of detail parts being missing, etc. they've quickly and apologetically corrected the problem. I don't get the bad attitude towards Hattons. They are not Amazon, or Walmart, or some giant corporation - they're just a local model shop that's "done good" and grown because they're successful. By all means, order from your favorite shops, and avoid shops you've had issues with (all of the above are genuine responses I've gotten from "local model shops" about orders) - but telling people not to order from a shop, that is a successful part of our hobby, just because that shop is successful seems counter-productive.

Yup, Wolverhampton operated on a "run what you brung" principle right up until the end. I've ridden on trains with a mix of Mk1, Mk2, and Mk3A stock

The instructions in my Colas were correct, you just have to read them carefully … if you glance at them, you'll remove the four obvious screws visible on the chassis and then fail to get the body off. The actual screws are underneath the bogies, in different positions on the fan-end and other-end, and you're going to need a slim long-stemmed screwdriver to get them loosened since the bogies cannot be moved out of the way. The body should come off relatively easily, it's not clipped, but it's a tight fit at each end, so use gentle force. Once inside decoder and speaker fitting is a breeze. To get the body back on, the fan-end (I think) screws can be put in place with the body and chassis upside down, and will sit there as you lower the chassis down - but to put the other-end screws in, you'll need tweezers to gently get them under the bogie and dropped into the hole before you lower the chassis. Getting the cab ends clipped down is also a bit of a , be careful not to tighten the screws until you've done this. (Since I bitched about the Hornby 87 decoder/speaker fitting and used the 70 as a shining example on that thread, I will now bitch here about how difficult Bachmann make getting the body off some of their models - I do appreciate a good solid "four or six clips and it's off" model)

*mutters* After fitting the 87 for sound yesterday, decided to catch up on the backlog on the desk, and do the Bachmann 70. Space for the speaker, with a speaker box for the common sized speaker, that could be removed if you want to do something different. Push-on jumpers to hold the speaker wire in place on the PCB so soldering not required. 21-pin socket with plenty of room above it for a full-sized decoder. Decoder outputs take over from the switches on the bottom. It's like a different world.

Re: common negative wiring Decoder outputs are common-positive, with the function output on the negative end. When the LED circuit board in the model is wired common-negative instead, there's no "easier" way to control each LED individually; since the negative output from the function would have to go to the common for all of the LEDs on that board. You really have to rip all the boards and PCBs out and redo every piece of wiring to each LED from scratch…. at least on this model, getting the PCB out of the way would be an improvement.

I'm using an ESU LokSound V4, which is about the biggest package size there is... There is space under the PCB on the non-speaker side, provided you're frugal with the glue/tak and spend a little time clearing the wires from the motor that's right below it. Another option for a smaller decoder would be the gap on the side between the motor and body panel. But for sure, alas, this is a second model in a row from Hornby (after the IEP) without sufficient decoder space provisioning.

Hornby use 8-pin decoder sockets, which doesn't provide the necessary function outputs to make things "more controllable" out of the box.

Awesome, thanks for confirming

Thanks Dave, Any chance you could confirm, for those of us of the sound-inclined, whether the sound-fitted version of this model will have a reprogrammable full-fat LokSound so we update Bif's sound files ourselves - or will it use the cheaper LokSound Select? Scott

LokSound Select cannot have the sound files updated, proper LokSound V4 can I realize that to some people this might not be important, but also to some of us, that is important

The adapter board just supplies an amplifier for the LokSound's un-amplified outputs - it's possible for the PCB of any model to do this. Bif regularly updates his sound files. I always prefer to self-fit a true LokSound decoder, and self-blow the sound, than use a Factory Fitted LokSound Select

To ask the question that I think is being asked here: Are you using a full-featured reprogrammable ESU LokSound decoder (e.g. the 54-400 or 54-499) or are you going to use a LokSound Select decoder? ESU have not announced any "V5.0" decoder, and their current full-featured decoders have 4 amplified outputs. The only "right size" decoders in their catalog with 6 function outputs are LokSound Select

There's a reasonable amount of space in the non-driving cars to fit a micro decoder and decent enough speaker for accuracy. Using ESU LokProgrammer you can then have the engine sounds coming from the right place, while still keeping the decoder in the motorized car for the motor and horn sounds, and a micro decoder in the dummy driving car for the other end.

No. LEDs are diodes, the voltage drop across the LED is effectively a constant determined by the diode itself. LEDs are not ohmic devices, an LED/resistor pair is NOT a voltage divider, which seems to be what you're confusing it with. The resistor is there to limit the current, not the voltage. https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/219 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LED_circuit When we add LEDs to decoder outputs, the absolute most critical thing is the decoders per-output and combined current supply rating (and whether that output is a logic output, sink, etc.)

I'm not sure how true the part regarding Select driving 21MTC actually is A more interesting thing in US modeling at the moment is what we might call "DCC Built-in", where the PCB of the model has the decoder directly onboard without any socket, and a lot of models here are going in that direction - and this is where I've seen "ESU Select" more. It's not like ESU don't make PluX variants of their decoders too. I think the problem with PluX is simply that it's "too well thought out", while the compatibility between PluX 8, 12, 16, and 22, seems like a good thing in principle, in practice it just makes a confusing mess. If you're buying a bells and whistles model, with a PluX 22 socket, you want a PluX 22 decoder. But the same manufacturer might save a few cents and only put a PluX 16 socket in their "just one bell and a whistle" model - now you can't mix and match decoders. The benefit of someone spending a bag of money on a bells, whistle, and fairy lights model but being able to put a "just the basics" PluX 8 in there, just isn't useful in practice. If you're a manufacturer who's having a little cash flow problem, and still not really putting much effort beyond "we put some lights in" in your models, the good old 8-pin NEM652 is probably doing you just fine. You probably didn't even bother to leave space for a decoder *and* speaker in your most recent model. If you're a manufacturer who's trying to do a little more, but having a bit of a backlog problem, now is probably not the time to rework all of your electronics. Especially since PluX22 has the same number of pins as 21MTC anyway; all you're going to do is give yourself more problems. Your customers are used to 21MTC decoders, and while it might not be a "blessed" standard, the problems with it are long, long in the past. If you're making something a bit smaller, the Next18 interface is only moderately incompatible with itself, and also not a blessed standard, so it's 21MTC all over again - but much smaller.

Um, if you put an LED across the output of the decoder without a resistor, then there will be no limit to the current that the LED will draw (that's why it's called a current limiting resistor), and your decoder will explode, your house will catch fire, and possibly your neighbor's cat too. Neither voltage, nor round spherical objects, have anything to do with it… unless you're talking about the really really really small "spherical objects" that move from the LED to the decoder and blow it up when you don't put a resistor there to hold them back. The resistor is not there to protect the LED, it's there to protect the decoder. That's why it doesn't matter what percentage of LEDs a 1k resistor works for - it matters what percentage of decoders. They're more expensive than LEDs. So for your decoder, read the data sheet. See how much current the decoder can source on an output pin, then pick a resistor that actually limits the current appropriately.

There really isn't "one answer" to this question, it can vary between decoders, and even outputs on the same decoder - for example it's pretty common for extended outputs to be current sinks rather than sources. Also at the same time, you're talking about LEDs … in which case the "voltage" isn't really an issue provided that it at least meets the forward drop voltage of the diode, what's much more critical for an LED is the current that can be sourced from that particular output. The resistor in the LED/resistor/source circuit is called a current-limiting resistor for a reason. You won't blow up an LED by having too much or too little voltage... But you will blow up a decoder if you source too much current from it. So rather than agree with any of the "1K should do the job, mate" answers above, I will say "read the data sheet that came with your £150 decoder"

They almost certainly are checked before they leave the factory, and then checked again once they arrive in the UK. The factory aren't the domain experts, they can identify problems where the product didn't match the specification sheet they were following, but they can't as readily identify more prototype-ish errors. (and with the continual stream of releases manufacturers are going for, it's not particularly workable to have someone from the UK living and working in China just do this)

At this point, I would say either a manufacturing defect or the shipping container fell off the boat* (* happens a lot more often than you might think)

If Bachmann were to announce a new tooling of the Class 37, that'd still give us another five to ten years of livery updates to the existing ones before it hits the shelves